The Merchant Adventurers hall was built in 1357-61 for the Mystery of Mercers, a guild of merchants from the city. They became involved in shipping woolen and cloth goods from England and returning with cargoes from the destination ports. This trade was primarily with northern Europe, the Baltic countries and Iceland.

The name Merchant Adventurers comes from a charter granted to the guild in 1581.

The history of Terry’s in York dates back to 1767 when Robert Berry opened his shop in Bootham Bar. In 1823 he was joined by his nephew-in-law Joseph Terry. Two years later Robert died and his son George became a partner, renaming the company Terry and Berry. This partnership lasted only three years and George sold out to Joseph and the company was renamed Terry’s of York. Joseph retired in 1850 and the company passed to his sons. The iconic Terry’s factory was built in York in 1923 in the Art Deco style by Joseph and Noel Terry.

I am not around to blog for the next two weeks so I thought we would use the opportunity to look at York, one of my favourite cities with a mixture of posts from my own blog and some videos from Youtube.

Reposting this post connected to Edith Cavell which I originally published last year

Van 132, known as the Cavell Van was built in 1919 as a luggage van to run on passenger services on the Chatham and South-Eastern Railway. Within a few weeks of service, it was selected to convey the body of Edith Cavell, a nurse who was working in Brussels at the outbreak of World War I. When the Germans captured Brussels Cavell and a few colleagues were allowed to remain. She became involved in the underground resistance and played an important part in the escape network for British servicemen trapped in Belgium. She was arrested in August 1915 and tried by a German military court. She and 4 others were executed by firing squad on October 12th. In 1919 it was decided that her body should be brought back to the UK and buried in Norwich Cathedral and van 132 played its part by carrying her coffin from Dover to Victoria on 13th-14th May and the newspapers reported that every station along the route was packed with people wanting to pay their respects.

Van 132 was used again on the 4th July for the repatriation of Captain Charles Fryatt, who was master of a merchant ship, who in 1915 was ordered to stop by a German U-Boat. Fryatt refused and attempted to ram the U-boat, which just managed to dive in time. He was captured a year later whilst trying to evacuate refugees from Holland. In July 1916 he was tried for piracy and executed by firing squad. This caused general condemnation not only from the allied nations but also from many neutral countries. His coffin was conveyed across the Channel to Dover and thence by train to Charing Cross on route to Dovercourt in Essex where he was reburied.

Van 132 was to be used again in November 1920 when it was used to carry the body of the ‘unknown warrior’. An unidentified body had been chosen and the coffin bearing the inscription ‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War of 1914-1918’ was conveyed from Boulogne to Dover, where it was placed into van 132 for the journey to Victoria. The next day it was taken to Westminster Abbey for the burial service in a new memorial to remember all those who had fallen during the war.

Edith Cavell was born near Norwich in 1865. As a 19-year-old she attended Laurel Court school, adjacent to Peterborough Cathedral, as a pupil / teacher. Her skill at languages led to her being recommended for a post as a governess in Brussels, Belgium. She stayed for five years, before returning to the UK to nurse her sick father. This led her to consider a change in career and she trained as a nurse at the London Hospital in 1896. In 1907, she returned to Brussels as the matron of a nursing school and when World War I broke out she continued to nurse the sick at the hospitals attached to the school, even when Belgium was occupied by the Germans. She became involved in the resistance movement, helping Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium to neutral Holland. In August 1915, she was arrested along with a number of others and after being interrogated and imprisoned for 10 weeks, she was executed on 12 October and buried in an unmarked grave. This harsh treatment of a woman and a nurse received multinational condemnation. In 1919, following the end of the war, her body was exhumed and reburied in Norwich Cathedral.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The memorial to Edith Cavell in Peterborough Cathedral was set up by students and teachers of Laurel Court school.

The Edith Cavell memorial

In 2009, Princess Elizabeth de Croy, whose grandparents had run the escape network in Belgium, presented the cathedral with a lamp used by the resistance for signalling night-time meetings during World War I. It hangs above the Cavell memorial.